Zogby Tracking: McCain Just 2 Points Down

The race for president of the United States remains far too close to call between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain as both candidates head toward the finish line, a recent Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking telephone polls shows.

The survey, including a three-day sample of 400 likely voters collected over each of the previous three days, Oct. 5-7, shows that Obama holds a slight advantage amounting to 1.9 percentage points over McCain. The previous poll had McCain trailing by 3 points.

This represents a bit of a recovery by McCain, who had been sliding in some polls before his running mate, Sarah Palin, put in a strong performance in her one and only debate performance last Thursday.

The Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll, was conducted before Tuesday’s Obama-McCain debate. It was performed by live telephone operators in Zogby’s in-house call center in Upstate New York, included a total of 1,220 likely voters nationwide, and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

The two candidates are doing well at attracting support from their own partisans — Obama is winning 84 percent of the Democratic Party support and McCain is winning 85 percent of the Republican Party support — but Obama has the edge among independent voters. He leads McCain among independents, 48 percent to 39 percent.

Obama wins support from a slightly higher percentage of conservative voters than McCain is winning from liberal voters, but the advantage is small.

This daily tracking telephone poll will continue each day until the Nov. 4 election, keeping in touch with the daily twists and turns in the race for the White House. The running poll of about 1,200 likely voters consists of three days of polling about 400 from each of the past three days. With each new day of polling that is folded into the poll, the oldest third of the survey is replaced with the fresh data, so the poll tracks movements and events in the campaigns.